As a child I loved the glamour of these men

Earl Spencer explains why he has always preferred War and Peace to any other painting at Althorp

12:00AM BST 21 Aug 1999

LIVING at Althorp has many privileges, but sharing the same roof as Van Dyck's War and Peace [pictured left] is quite something. There are several paintings in our collection that are supposedly Van Dycks - they go in and out of authenticity as the generations go by - but the ones that cannot be questioned include one of his mistress and this dual portrait of George, Lord Digby and William, Lord Russell.

We have about 500 paintings in the house, but this has always been my favourite. By coincidence it's the most valuable but that's irrelevant. To appreciate it you don't have to know anything about its background or the subsequent Civil War or anything about Van Dyck. When I was a child I loved it because both men look incredibly glamorous. But the drama of the painting is the secret of its success.

George Digby and William Russell were related by marriage and were two of the great court figures of the period before the English Civil War. You see two men who are very similar in background and probably outlook and yet their qualities as people are reflected in everything around them. One is a man of learning and science and the other a man of war and aggression, and the symbols of both lie by their feet and by their sides.

As a boy I was drawn towards war more than peace - the man in red with his sword by his side and the plated armour by his feet. It's an incredibly powerful image for a little boy, but as I've grown up I think that it's the dual composition that really makes the painting work, the fact that you've got a contrasting look about the men but a similar swagger, a similar confidence.

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The two look as though they dominate the world - as, I suppose, in the 1630s they would have done. They were the richest men in the kingdom in one of the finest nations on Earth. Van Dyck balances the two so beautifully. Neither of the men is particularly beautiful but their arrogance and self-assuredness carry the painting off.

There is an irony. Digby is dressed for peace but he became a leading Cavalier during the Civil War - and proved hugely unsuccessful. Russell - who is dressed for war in the painting - fought for the other side, for the Parliamentarians.

Here were two men, related by marriage, and both related to me, and there they were together in this portrait one decade and then the next they were fighting each other on separate sides. It says quite a lot about the English Civil War that that was what these people were reduced to: fighting their own flesh and blood.

Van Dyck had a rare gift for a foreign painter in that he captured something truly English. This painting is just an example of that but I don't think anyone who was born in England could have done a better job of capturing that essence. To me this is the quintessential English painting. You would think that Althorp's Long Gallery, which is 120 feet in length, couldn't have a focal point but War and Peace at the end of the room dominates it.

One of the windows in the gallery actually functions like a door. It swings out so that if there ever was a fire War and Peace could be saved first. I've looked into the family records and I don't believe this painting has ever left the house before so it will be interesting to see the window being used as it really is meant to be when we transport the painting to London for the Royal Academy exhibition.

I think it's very hard for modern-day portrait painters to achieve this sort of depth of quality. I've looked at a lot of portrait painters because I'm having my own portrait done later this year and really this classical way of portraying people seems to be an art that has almost disappeared.

This is an edited extract from an interview with Earl Spencer that can be seen in 'Omnibus: Van Dyck Undressed' on Monday, September 13 at 10.40pm on BBC 1.